Can I exclude certain packages from the autoupdate process?

Yes, but in the current version of our autoupdate software, there are some drawbacks. You can cause the “yum” package management software used by the autoupdater to ignore packages which match a given name or wildcard. This will prevent them from being updated by the autoupdater, but will also cause them to be ignored by manual yum commands.

To mark packages as ignored, put a line like this in yum.conf:

exclude=”packagename”
or
exclude=”packagepattern*”

For example, to prevent MySQL and all related packages from being automatically updated, you could use this:
exclude=”*mysql*”

In addition to the side-effect mentioned above, this will also prevent any packages which may depend on updates to your listed packages from being updated, so please choose your patterns with care.

A future version of the autoupdate program will have the ability to list packages in the autoupdate configuration so that normal yum usage will not be affected.

Where can I get the Flash plugin?

Macromedia’s Flash is a great plugin for your browser. With it, you can view .swf animations — MIME-type “Application/x-shockwave-flash”.

Unfortunately we cannot legally distribute this software with BU Linux 6. However, do not fret — we can point you to where an officially-permitted RPM package of the plugin resides:

You can get the rpm here: http://macromedia.mplug.org/

Just download the rpm for Fedora Core (the nearest match for BU Linux 6) and install it like this:

sudo rpm -Uvh flash-plugin-*.i386.rpm

and you should be all set.

(Note that the bigger Macromedia Shockwave Player is not available as a native Linux app.)